THENEWYORKER,SEPTEMBER14, 2020 55
“Six-two. Six-three, mibbe.”
“Casper! You’re so meek for a tall fel-
low.” He leaned back on the banquette,
his head barely above the divider.
“I’m just quiet. My father always said
ye shouldn’t talk just to fill a room—”
“Big cock?”
“Whut?”
The man sighed. “Do. You. Have. A.
Big. Cock?”
B
y the fourth day, I had abandoned
the housework entirely. I went out-
side and gathered up some fallen leaves,
then grew bored of that. All afternoon
I lay on the grass, enjoying the clear, slow
sun. That evening I was sitting, straight-
backed, pink-faced as a new bride, when
I finally heard his key turning in the lock.
William seemed pleased that the
workweek was behind him. We ate In-
dian takeout on the rug. Afterward I
washed the dishes while William poured
us some whisky. He put an LP on the
stereo, some string concerto, a jarring
sound that made me tilt my head like
a sheepdog listening for trouble.
William stood in the open door of
the conservatory, smoking a cigarette
that smelled of mint. He was wearing
a white polo shirt, luminous with bleach.
It was odd to finally see his bare fore-
arms, to see him so relaxed. Without
the armor of his suit I could see that he
was gently overweight, not unlike a pot-
bellied toddler.
“Casper, do you ever play tennis?”
I wiped the kitchen counter. “No.”
“Pity. With your impressive wing-
span you’d be hard to beat.” William
arched his back and reached out as far
as he could. “I should teach you.”
I sipped at the Bunnahabhain. It was
better than any whisky we could afford
at home, and at the same time it was a
shocking waste of money. “My father
would have belted me if I’d told him I
was away to hit a ball.”
“How many sheep does your father
have?” Something in the way he said it
made me think he wasn’t much inter-
ested in the exact answer.
“About a hundred and forty-seven.
There’s been a lambing since I was
last home.”
“Well, what if I just bought them
all?” He said it with a little giggle.
I sank into an armchair. “Why would
ye do a thing like that?”
“I want to get into your good graces.
What will it take, huh?” He flicked his
cigarette out onto the lawn. He crossed
the kitchen and sat on the pouf at my
feet. He worried the frayed cloth where
my knee was just about bursting through
my jeans.
“I’m just glad to be in London. To
have a wee bit of work.”
William tossed his head back. It
seemed like he was talking not to me
but to some person offstage who had
been feeding him lines. “I’m becoming
tired of this.”
I could smell those bright lemons
again.
He sanded my thigh with the heel
of his palm. “Come on! Why are you
playing silly buggers? Why on earth do
you think you are here?” William finished
his whisky and crunched his ice—he
put ice in this excellent single malt.
“I’m here for a job. Except every time
I try to do something you tell me to
leave it.”
“Christ’s sakes, Casper. The advert
was in the back pages of a gay maga-
zine. For a houseboy. It’s hardly the em-
ployment office.”
“I know that.” The stabbing concerto
was giving me a headache.
He stared at me; his eyes were as
gray as the Minch. “And?”
“Well, if that is what you were look-
ing for, why didn’t you just write a per-
sonal ad?”
He startled me then. The little En-
glishman laughed so long that I was al-
most encouraged to laugh along with
him, to go along with it, if only to keep
the peace. Then William stood up
abruptly and left me to stare out at the
striped lawn.
T
he photo album was bound in claret
leather. The front was debossed with
his gilded initials. William dropped
the book in my lap and sat on the pouf
again, his kneecap brushing against my
thigh. He was watching me closely; his
reading glasses sat askew on the end of
his nose, one arm warped, the other
arm missing. I put my drink down and
opened the album. Each page held a col-
lection of photographs; there were four
to a sleeve. The photos were of young
men, maybe twenty to thirty different
faces. William had organized them as
though they were chapters in his life; they
were laid out thoughtfully, boy by boy.
The young men were caught in mo-
ments of delight. There were pictures
of them laden with shopping bags; snaps
of them eating falafel at Camden Mar-
ket, or smiling in new suits under the
glittering light bulbs of the West End.
Some photos were taken abroad; sun-
burned boys walking the same wall in
Dubrovnik, three different boys, three
different seasons, three different trips.
There was a series of one young man.
He was in Lisbon, dangling over a bal-
cony, pointing toward some jacarandas
like a young Hermes. There was a
glimpse of unburned thigh peeking out
from the mouth of his blue shorts. As
he leaned over the balcony, his pale heels
slipped out of his new leather shoes. I
wanted to kiss their soft pink buds.
Some of the boys appeared in only a
few photos. But a shifty-looking waif,
translucent-skinned, with mouse-colored
hair, appeared again and again. It was as
though he’d spent every college break
with William. The last shot of him was
in Vietnam (or Thailand, perhaps), stand-
ing at the center of a gang of similarly
youthful Asian boys, his light skin lumi-
nous against their wall of honeyed chests.
They were drinking glasses of what looked
like condensed milk; the thought of it,
in that heat, made my stomach gurgle.
“For many years I did place personal
ads,” William said. “I took care to ex-
plain myself, everything I’d achieved
and worked hard for. I even tried not
to be too picky in what I wanted. I
mean ... ” He waved his hand over his
body as if in evidence. “In all those years
I received four responses. One letter
from a retired schoolteacher in Wigan
who couldn’t go anywhere unless it was
by bus, and three quite gorgeous poems
from a Church of England vicar who
never provided a return address.”
I didn’t know what to say. I kept turn-
ing the pages.
Halfway through the album I could
tell that William had a type. He liked
them Northern, scrawny almost; all par-
simonious hips and jutting clavicles. He
liked them scowling—a little hungry-
looking. He liked them Scottish.
William rose to refill our glasses.
“Boys like you would never reply to my
advert unless there was money in it.”
I was sad for the Englishman—but
he was not sad for himself. I found the
